The Zone of Interest (11 page)

‘Where’s Torquil?’

‘For the 10th time, Torquil’s
dead
. Bohdan did it. With his
shovel
, Hannah, remember?’

‘Bohdan killed Torquil. You say.’

‘Yes! Out of spite, I suppose. And funk. At the other camp he’ll have to start again. It could be hard for him.’

‘Hard in what way?’

‘Well he won’t be a gardener in Stutthof. It’s a different kind of regime.’ I decided not to tell Hannah that at Stutthof you got 25 lashes the minute you arrived. ‘It was me who had to clear it all up. Torquil. Not a pretty sight, I can tell you.’

‘Why should we go to my mother’s?’

I hummed and hawed for a bit, claiming it was a good idea anyway. Hannah said,

‘Come on, what’s the real reason?’

‘Oh all right. Berlin has mandated an emergency Projekt. Things’ll be unpleasant here for a while. Just for a couple of weeks.’

Hannah said sarcastically, ‘Unpleasant? Oh really? That’ll make a change. Unpleasant in what way?’

‘I’m not at liberty to disclose. War work. It may have a deleterious effect on the air quality. Here, let me top that up for you.’

A minute later I returned, with Hannah’s wine and a huge glass of gin.

‘Have a ponder about it. I’m sure you’ll see it’s for the best. Mm, nice sky. It’s getting colder. Which’ll help.’

‘Help how?’

I coughed and said, ‘Now you know we’ve got the Playhouse tomorrow night.’

Her flicked cigarette end looked like a firefly in the dusk – an upward swoop.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘gala performance of
And the Woods Sing For Ever
.’ I smiled. ‘You frown, my pet. Come on, we must keep up appearances! Dear oh dear. Who’s a sulky girl then? I’d invoke the name of Dieter Kruger. But you’ve shown, haven’t you, that you’re no longer much bothered about his fate.’

‘Oh, I’m bothered. Didn’t you tell me that Dieter passed through Stutthof? You told me they give you 25 lashes on arrival.’

‘Did I? Well only with very suspicious prisoners. They won’t do that to
Bohdan
. . .
And the Woods Sing For Ever
’s a tale of rural life, Hannah.’ I took a big gulp of the stringent liquor and thoroughly rinsed my mouth with it. ‘About the longing for the redemptive community. The organic community, Hannah. It’ll make you pine for Abbey Timbers.’

It was a joint anniversary, commemorating i) our decisive electoral breakthrough on September 14, 1930, and ii) the historic passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws on September 15, 1935. So: a double cause for celebration!

After a few cocktails in the Crush Bar, Hannah and myself (the cynosure of all eyes) made our way to our seats in the front row. The house lights dimmed, and the curtain creaked ceilingward – to reveal a thickset milkmaid sorrowing over a bare pantry.

And the Woods Sing For Ever
was about a family in a farmstead during the harsh winter that followed the Diktat of Versailles.
The frost’s destroyed the tubers, Otto
was 1 of its lines, and
Get your toffee nose out of that book, can’t you?
was another. Otherwise,
And the Woods Sing For Ever
completely passed me by. Not that my mind went blank – on the contrary. It was most peculiar. I spent the whole 2½ hours intently estimating how long it would take (given the high ceiling as against the humid conditions) to gas the audience, and wondering which of their clothes would be salvageable, and calculating how much their hair and gold fillings might fetch . . .

Afterwards, at the party proper, a couple of Phanodorm washed down with a few cognacs soon restored my equilibrium. I left Hannah with Norberte Uhl, Angelus Thomsen, and Olbricht and Suzi Erkel whilst I had some words with Alisz Seisser. The poor little thing is off to Hamburg at the end of the week. Alisz’s first item of business: see about her pension. For some reason she was white with dread.

‘We’ll go from west to east. There’ll be 800 of you.’

Szmul shrugged, and produced, if you can believe, a handful of black olives from his trouser pocket.

‘Maybe 900. Tell me, Sonderkommandofuhrer. Are you a married man?’

He said with his head down, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Shulamith, sir.’

‘And where is this “Shulamith”, Sonderkommandofuhrer?’

It’s not quite true to say that the crows of the charnel house are impervious to all human emotion. Fairly frequently, in the course of their work, they encounter someone they know. The Sonder sees these neighbours, friends, relatives, as they come in, or as they go out, or both. Szmul’s 2nd-in-command once found himself in the shower room calming the fears of his identical twin. Not long ago there was a certain Tadeusz, another good worker, who looked to the end of his belt in the Leichenkeller (they use their belts, do you see, to haul the Stucke), and there was his wife; he fainted; but they gave him some schnapps and a length of salami, and 10 minutes later he was back on the job, snipping merrily away.

‘Come on, where is she?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Still in Litzmannstadt?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Pardon, sir, but did they see about the excavator?’

‘Forget about the excavator. It’s a wreck.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And they’re to be carefully counted. Understand? Count the skulls.’

‘Skulls are no good, sir.’ He leaned sideways and expelled the last olive stone. ‘There’s a more reliable method, sir.’

‘Oh really? Here, how long’ll all this take?’

‘Depends on the rainfall, sir. I’m guessing, but I’d say 2 or 3 months.’

‘2 or 3
months
?’

He turned to me, and I saw what was unusual about his face. Not the eyes (his were the usual Sonder eyes), but the mouth. I knew then, up on the rise, that Szmul, immediately after the successful completion of the present measure, would have to be dealt with, by the employment of the apt procedure.

Have garnered some further information on the sugary Herr Thomsen (despite his record, I think, deep down, he
is
‘1 of those’). His mother, Bormann’s much older half-sister, made an advantageous match, ne? She married a merchant banker – who also collected modern art of the most degenerate stripe. Does the mould seem familiar – money, modern art? I wonder if that ‘Thomsen’ wasn’t once something like ‘Tawmzen’. Anyway, both parents, in 1929, died in an elevator plunge in New York (moral: set foot in that Hebrew Sodom and you get what you so ‘richly’ deserve!). So then this only child, this princeling gets himself unofficially adopted by his Uncle Martin – the man who controls the appointment book of the Deliverer.

Now I’ve had to slave and sweat blood, I’ve had to kill myself to get where I am. But some people – some people are born with a silver . . . Now that’s funny. I was about to employ the usual phrase – but then an improvement popped into my head. And it’s perfect for him. Yes. Angelus Thomsen was born with a silver
Schwanz
in his mouth!

Nicht wahr?

I was bent over my desk at home, deep in weary meditation, when I heard footsteps; they neared and paused. They were not Hannah’s footsteps.

And I was thinking: I am someone caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, the Economic Administration Head Office is always after me to do everything I can to swell the labour strength (for the munitions industries); on the other, the Reich Central Security Department presses for the disposal of as many evacuees as possible, for obvious reasons of self-defence (the Jews constituting a 5th column of intolerable proportions). I swiped my fingertips across my brow in a kind of reflexive salute. And now, I see (the teletype lay before me), that that moron Gerhard Student at EAHO is floating the bright idea that all able-bodied mothers should be worked till they drop in the boot factory at Chełmek!
Fine
, I’ll tell him.
And you can come to the ramp and try separating them from their children
. These people – they just don’t
think
. I said loudly,

‘Whoever’s out there may as well come in.’

At last came the knock. Looking very penitent and stricken, Humilia crept into the room.

‘Are you just going to stand there and tremble,’ I muttered (I was thoroughly out of sorts), ‘or do you have something to convey?’

‘My conscience is upset, sir.’

‘Oh really? We can’t have that. That would never do. Well?’

‘I was obedient to Miss Hannah when I shouldn’t have been.’

I said quite calmly, ‘When I shouldn’t have been,
sir
.’

*

It’s the fire, do you see, it’s the fire.

How to make them burn, naked bodies, how to make them catch?

We started with very modest accumulations, using wooden planks, and we were hardly getting anywhere, but then Szmul . . . You know, I can see why the Sonderkommandofuhrer leads a charmed life. He it was who made a series of suggestions which, as it happened, proved key. I lay them down, for future reference.

1) There must be but a single pyre.

2) The pyre must burn continuously, on a 24-hour basis.

3) Liquefied human fat must be used to aid combustion. Szmul organised the run-off gutters and the ladling squads, which moreover resulted in considerable economies in gasoline. (Reminder: impress this saving on Blobel
and Benzler
.)

There is at this stage only one technical difficulty that periodically confronts us. The fire’s so hot you can’t get near it, nicht?

Now I ask you, this is really priceless, this is, this really ‘takes the cake’. All of a sudden the phone’s jumping off the hook: Lothar Fey of the Air Defence Authority, angrily complaining, if you please, about our nocturnal conflagrations! Is it any wonder I’m going out of my mind?

Whilst Humilia saw fit to tell me that my wife has written and dispatched a personal communication to a proven debauchee, she was unable – or unwilling – to enlighten me as to its contents. This has ruined my concentration. Of course, the entire thing could be perfectly innocent. Innocent?
How
could it be innocent? I have no illusions about the hysterical carnality of which Hannah has shown herself to be capable, and besides it is common knowledge that once a woman loosens the sacred bonds of modesty she quickly descends to the most fantastic depravities, squatting, squelching, squeezing, squirming—

Hannah briskly knocked and entered and said, ‘You wanted to see me.’

‘Yes.’ Biding my time, for now, I said, ‘Look, there’s no point in you going to Abbey Timbers. The Projekt’s going to take months so you’ll just have to get used to it.’

‘I didn’t want to go anyway.’

‘Oh? What’s this? Have you got a Projekt of your own by any chance?’

‘Maybe,’ she said, and turned on her heel.

. . . I raised my hands and rubbed my eyes. This spontaneous action, the like of which any tired schoolboy might reflexively perform over his homework, was quite painless – for the first time in I don’t know how long. In the downstairs toilet I consulted the mirror. Ja, those martyred orbs of mine are still very slightly bloodshot, and slack and pouchy what with all the smoke and the late nights (it’s not as if the trains don’t keep coming). But my black eyes are no more.

There are the flames and the fumes; even the clearer air ripples and wriggles. No?

Like a sheet of gauze pulsating in the wind.

Now the Sonders, under Szmul’s direction, have rigged up a kind of ziggurat of warped railway tracks. It is the size of the cathedral in Oldenberg.

The scene is I suppose on the very crest of the modern, but when I watch from the mound I keep thinking of the slave-built pyramids of Egypt. Using the wide ladders and the hoists they load the great lattice, then they withdraw to their wheeled towers and feed the fire, do you understand, by tossing in the pieces, sometimes by the bucketful. These towers rock like dark-age siege engines.

At night the tracks glow red. I keep glimpsing a gigantic black toad with illuminated veins even when I close my eyes.

*

Communication from the Geheime Staatspolizei in Hamburg: the widow Seisser is on her way back, but she returns to us with her status revised. Alisz is now an evacuee.

The Sonderkommandofuhrer was right about the best way of counting. Not skulls. Almost all the pieces were dispatched by the standard Genickschuss but often clumsily or hastily, thus splintering the crania. So skulls are hopeless. The most scientific procedure, we have established, is to count the femurs and divide by 2. Nicht?

In response to the domestic emergency I have activated the criminal Kapo I maintain in the coal mine at Furstengrube.

3. SZMUL: WITNESS

It would infinitesimally console me, I think, if I could persuade myself that there is companionship – that there is human communion, or at least respectful fellow-feeling, in the bunkroom above the disused crematory.

A very great many words are spoken, certainly, and our exchanges are always earnest, articulate, and moral.

‘Either you go mad in the first ten minutes,’ it is often said, ‘or you get used to it.’ You could argue that those who get used to it do in fact go mad. And there is another possible outcome: you don’t go mad and you don’t get used to it.

When work ends we gather, we who have not got used to it and have not gone mad, and we talk and we talk. In the Kommando, hugely expanded for the current collaboration, about five per cent belong to this category – say forty men. And in the bunkroom we gather a little way apart, usually around dawn, with our food, our liquor, and our cigarettes, and we talk. And I like to think that there is companionship.

I feel we are dealing with propositions and alternatives that have never been discussed before, have never needed to be discussed before – I feel that if you knew every day, every hour, every minute of human history, you would find no exemplum, no model, no precedent.

Martyrer
,
mucednik
,
martelaar, meczonnik
,
martyr
: in every language I know, the word comes from the Greek,
martur
, meaning
witness
. We, the Sonders, or some of us, will bear witness. And this question, unlike every other question, appears to be free of deep ambiguity. Or so we thought.